George Russell is focused on improving his race performance after lacking it in F1 2024, as he notes about return to fitness ahead of 2025.
After the Christmas holidays, the F1 drivers have started their fitness regime to prepare for the 2025 season. The teams are in the final stages of getting everything ready to start the new year with the drivers too visiting their respective factories for seat fit and attend various meetings.
At Mercedes, Russell is to become the defacto leader after the departure of Lewis Hamilton. The Brit has started his training programme as well with his trainer at Brackley. “The break is needed for everyone in Formula One, but in all honesty, I was eager to get back to it,” he said in his first say of F1 2025.
“There is a bit of time until the first race, but the first day here is a step towards that. What’s so great being back is that you see how motivated everybody is to go racing and see how the car is. Of course, George has not just been sat on the sofa since Abu Dhabi in December, wasting little time after the turn of the year to get back into athlete mode.
“I started my physical preparation with Aleix [trainer] on 2 January. We have done a few weeks now, the second week was absolutely brutal. We build into it, the last thing you want to do is go out too hard and injure yourself. I kept moving over the break anyway, keeping mobile to avoid sitting around all day doing nothing.
“Exercise for me is more than just a physique, it’s a great way of making me feel good and helps my mental health – that’s why I don’t want to stop,” summed up Russell, who has the prime goal to improve his race performance after falling short in 2024. The Brit won against Hamilton in the qualifying trim, but couldn’t do so in the races as much as he would have liked.
“My goals are very much the same and the approach has not changed,” said Russell. “Formula One is so unique, so you cannot really set goals like that. If I say that I want to win four races this year because last year I won three, I am not going to be satisfied if I win five but the car is capable of 10.
“I tend to keep my goals on more details targets. Last year Qualifying was my strength, but my race pace was not always the best. I know I have the speed over one lap but there is no reason why I should not be able to convert that over the course of a race. I need to work on some elements to achieve that, and there will be some other goals – that perhaps are not clear to the fans at home but are at the forefront of my mind.
“The great thing about F1 is you enter a new year, with a new car and new limitations – something that may have been a strength last year may not be this year. You always have to adapt,” summed up Russell, as Mercedes is set for February 24 launch of its 2025 car ahead of a shakedown in Bahrain before the official pre-season test at the same venue.
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